


the good work

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Boy in the Striped Pajamas Adult AU, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character, Kissing, Love, M/M, Romance, Violence, Word War II Au, anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5010691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin Smith, from the Austrian mountains, has only one dream: to go to America and live in luxury. Yet with his arm blown off by a shell, he is sent to work at a household in Poland. It's there he meets a man behind a long, high fence, with gaunt cheeks and burning eyes.<br/><i><br/>"His breath must have felt hot and sharp – Erwin feels heavy with sadness and delirious with delight at the sight of this almost skeletal man eating the food that he had stolen from the crooked house. He looks at the fine, squirrel-like bones of Levi’s hands and the criminal way he grabbed at cakes so they squished into his palm – so many things broke so easily in Nazi Germany and he hopes this will not break."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the good work

**Author's Note:**

> Well, someone asked for a Boy in Striped Pajamas AU, and here I am to provide. Again, Erwin seems slightly naive at first, but don't worry, it changes.
> 
> Completed in time for ERWIN WEEK - Either Modern AU or Fantasy AU idk which this comes under.

The Polish cold was not like the thick , melodramatic American cold, or the appreciative English cold that froze gently on noses and dusted hats with virtuous sprinkles. The Polish cold was vindictive, unforgivable, and vicious, attacking men with knives and rakes of ice – as if it knew that it was occupied by Nazi Germany, and was merely conforming to character. Nevertheless, it was in this snow that Erwin Smith and Levi Ackerman sat – on _opposite_ sides of the fence, their jaws clenched shut against any threat of a shiver, and merely looked at the other.

-       - -

It had been so _straightforward_ at first, Erwin thought morosely as his boots crushed half-cut grass. So bloody straightforward. Austria was not involved in the war, it was not involved in anything except to sit beside Germany and Hungary and provide them with idyllic scenery and women for their officers, and sometimes turn a blind eye to the mountains being used as training grounds. Then, however, Hitler crept in as if by demonic possession and began fussing this, began fussing that, and rich, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Erwin Smith was pulled from every side as he resembled the poster-Aryan man, his crisp yellow hair slicked down with wax and his cheeks clean, and his nose straight. If Hitler had seen him, his heart would burst with devotion.

The man striding through the grass, however, had damp hair from the earlier rain, and spilling over into the cliff of his forehead. Erwin sighed. He had gone into the conscript army for two months, and gotten his arm blown off with the second bomb the British threw at his regiment. So for a while, Erwin’s job had been to pull people into graves and kick some dirt over them – a sort of battlefield mortician for two years. His wound however, festered, and his arm had to be removed at the shoulder – and Erwin was promptly deemed as “imperfect.” Blonde hair and blue eyes were nothing if you didn’t have your right arm. So he was sent to Poland to a crooked house with three floors, to work as valet for a man who never spoke in anything except harsh words. It was unfair, really.

He sat down heavily and surveyed if any damage had been done to his boots by the mud from the aforementioned earlier rain. He hoped he had amassed enough ration booklets to exchange for a pair of sturdier footwear. American boots, he thinks wistfully – those American soldiers had the best boots he had ever seen, lined with fur and halfway up their shins. He looked up as he tied his laces – a fence ran across in front of him – long and ugly, made of black metal that twisted into loops at the top. Some sort of home for Jews, Erwin remembers reading when he first arrived at the crooked house – Hitler’s idea for mass cleansing.

“Imagine…” he tells himself, a solitary figure, his hair falling light into his face and his jaw straight. “American boots… Lined fur…”

He grinned to himself, trying out some words in his halting, heavy English.

“Hello, I am living in America.” He patted his worn boots. “Good boots, good girls and good life. We are all very happy in America… Ford car, television, radio. America guns –“

“You fuckin’ shit-for-brains,” drawled a voice somewhere directly across him, and Erwin’s head shot up ridiculously fast. “Americans are fucking fat, and they’re loud. They also eat weird shit – tiny ass pieces of bread and a chunk of meat ten times bigger than their dick. And your boots are good enough, shut your mouth.”

Erwin’s surprise took in a heavily boned, thin face – it would have been handsome if not for the bruises by his cheeks and nose. Yet even a naïve eye such as Erwin’s could take in the irregularities in the face, the way the straight nose looks like it had been broken at least twice, the ginger way he held his elbow, and the striped pajamas he was clad in, too large for his painfully thin, undernourished body. His hair was black, and although it was a good length, it was messy and uncombed and looked as if it had once been shaved forcibly, his hostile eyes darted backward and forward, and his feet (Erwin feels almost guilty) were clad in a pair of paper slippers. This, Erwin realizes with a surge of something a schoolboy may feel when seeing a lion in a zoo, this was a _Jew._

“Well…” he began tentatively. He had not read much about the Jew, although his employer at the crooked house had expostulated at length about them, but he knows that the Jew race was vile, and vicious, and thieving. “How would you know? You’re only a Jew.”

“Yeah?” The Jew sneered. “You think I’m beneath you? I’d not have talked to you, fuckface, if I thought you were above me – talkin’ to your superiors here gets you a beating worth nothing in the world. No, I came to say hello because your German is ugly and reminds me of a shitty country bumpkin. And let me tell you, any Jew is better than a country boy, let alone one with one fucking arm.”

“That’s not what Hitler says.” Erwin’s eyebrows raised impressively. He decided to backtrack, however, he had never seen Hitler in his life, but he had seen a Jew and let it be damned if he wasn’t going to extract any information about America from him. “How do you know about America?”

“I’ve got my ways… street rats have big ears…” The Jew sat down, and Erwin noted that even the slight motion looked like it caused him pain. “And you’re pronouncing it wrong, shitface – Americans don’t say “ahh-mey-ree-kaa” like a fucking Austrian country bumpkin. They say “eh-mey-rey-cuh”.”

“I see.” Erwin considered turning around and walking back. He knows that his employer has something to do with the Jew-camp and that talking to this Jew would probably get him fired. He considered against leaving, however – this man was interesting in his vocabulary and after all, he was only the manservant in the house. Getting fired wouldn’t mean much, as he could just return to his home in Austria, claiming his war wound. “So, Jew –“

“Okay, listen.” The man’s eyes had purple circles under them, but they were dark and expressive and lined with lashes. The Nazis couldn’t shave off eyelashes. “Listen, bitch – I don’t mind getting called a Jew by the Gestapo, or Hitler, or even the shopkeepers. But if a shitty Austrian country bumpkin calls me a Jew one more time – I will fucking strangle you through this fence and bury your body right there. You’ll die in your stinking boots and dreams of ugly ass America.”

“Then what is your name?” Erwin asked, scooting an inch backwards. “Or your number, if that’s what you’re referred to. And your age please, Jew.”

“I’ll fucking murder you one day, you watch it, country boy.” The man spat at him, before continuing. Talk must have been sparse or depressing in the camp – for someone as street-smart as Levi to sit and chat with a naïve boy from within the Austrian mountains, but he did. “My name is Levi Ackerman. My number is printed on my shirt, but if you call me by that number I swear I’ll rip that beak nose off your shitty face. I’m twenty two.”

“I’m Erwin Smith. I’m twenty four.” Erwin smiled, for the first time since he had started walking that day. He hadn’t met someone his age since the war, and that was a long time ago, before rehabilitation and bed rest. “I work as the valet in that crooked house you can see from here. Herr Kaufman, he works as something with your camp – the superintendent perhaps.”

“Valet? You and your army boots? Probably cause you got your damn arm blown off, isn’t it?” Levi snorted – before pulling himself into a somber expression, as if he remembered where he was, in which country, and that the only view of Erwin he had was through barbed wire. “Hey, sorry, I know my place. Don’t go and complain or some shit. Right after I was stupid enough to give you my real name.”

“I wouldn’t complain.” Erwin’s earnest face drew Levi in some manner. And although the Jewish man was hungry, and tired, and in pain from his broken wrist, he still had strength left to look at the schoolboy innocence on the other’s face. That if he were anything, he would be good to Levi. Perhaps only Levi – not any other Jew – but Levi has always grown up selfish and needing to fight for his own bread, and this scrap of kindness in the eager one armed man was like a scrap of meat thrown to a dog with only one leg.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “You better not. Hey, since we sort of know each other – you got any bread?”

“Sorry, Levi.” Erwin was apologetic. “I don’t bring food on walks.”

“Yeah? Why not? I mean your shitty crooked house is quite far off, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But I’m really full from breakfast.”

“Full, huh?” Levi murmurs. And with that, he rises up – his movements vivid and angry, and turns his back on Erwin as he begins walking back to the barracks in the camp, his footsteps slurred like a drunk, yet heavy with pain. Erwin watches him go, the small figure in the striped pajamas, with the barren background – low grey barracks and a large building spewing smoke and a bad smell. The moment seemed elongated to Erwin, like the long hum of the wind, or the tide’s steady flow.

“Levi!” He yells dangerously. “Levi, I’ll bring some bread next time, Friday! Promise!”

Promise, Levi thinks, as he walks toward his bunk, giving no indication that he heard Erwin. He would not have decided to go back on Friday, if Erwin hadn’t said that last, childish word. Promise! It was a heavy, ugly word, but from Erwin’s lips it sounded as it should sound – full of happiness and things to look forward to. And now Levi had something to look forward to, bread on Friday. He licks around his lips as he lies on the bare boards, shoulder to shoulder with old men and smelly teenagers. Bread on Friday, he thinks, meditatively –a promise.

-

Erwin surveys the basket he discreetly brought with him, as well as the angry bruise on his shin as he pulled back his pants to look at the large purple blemish. He prodded it, and hoped he wouldn’t lose a leg (he’d already lost an arm, and limping back to Mother with two limbs gone would cause her to go and scream at Hitler himself). Walking with a heavy basket and only one arm to carry it proved far more difficult than Erwin had initially imagined, and perhaps that’s why the army made him drag bodies into graves – because it was bloody hard. He had fallen a minimum of six times.

“Your legs are hairy as fuck.” Levi’s drawl reached Erwin before the man came limping, a new bruise blooming on his left cheek, angry and bleeding at the crown. “You fell over or what?”

“Six times.” Erwin said mournfully. “It’s all right, I’ve lost an arm once anyway.”

Levi snorted.

“You got me bread then, Smith? Been looking forward to that all week.”

“Yes, and more!” The same look came into Erwin’s eyes as the time he had promised to bring Levi food. He reached into the basket and brought out cream cake, buns and a packet of meat, as well as biscuits and bread and a bottle of water, enough to feed a dining table. “Today, we eat like…”

“The American!” Levi finished, grinning. His eyes flashed as he took in the food, his stomach begging him earnestly to reach through the fence and grab the meat, to run before another man could steal in from him. But he watched as Erwin passed him all the food under the fence, and he began ravenously stuffing his face, the tangy taste of the meat colliding horribly with the sweetness of the cake, but Levi did not mind. His eyes rolled up, he would die to eat like this, he would die to eat like a King, like a non-Jew. It was bright and hot in his mouth, taste and salt and sweetness, and Erwin watched Levi eat like this as he nibbled on a biscuit himself. It makes him want to watch Levi eat for long days on end.

“Can I have some water?” Erwin asked quietly. “There –“

“This water?” Levi asked, frowning, his face smeared with butter and grease. “I – fuck, I’ve been drinking from it. Fuck, my lips touched – shit, I’ll wipe it down for you, just a sec – fuck, I –“

“No, what are you saying? Just pass it to me.” Erwin reached through the fence and grabbed the bottle, taking a light swig before passing it back. Levi looked at him, and his eyes were burning. He finds the large mouthful he had bitten hard to swallow, this fucking…country bumpkin just drank from the same cup as him, a Jew, whose bedding was burned for fear it would spread diseases. Something sharp and hard is caught in his throat and his face crumples for a split second. Erwin pretends he doesn’t notice.

“So, how have you been?” Erwin asked, as if they were old friends instead of merely having met the previous week. “I’ve been finding my way about that crooked house. It’s got too many rooms, I tell you Levi, and too many servants. It’s why I can come out often, Herr Kaufman is often too busy to want his tea or to be helped into his suit.”

“Well, things here are as usual. Another batch of people went into the smoke place.” Levi chewed thoughtfully. He must not let Erwin know. “I wonder where the fuck they’re taking them, really. The smoke smells like shit. Do you think it’s manure work?”

“Yes, I’ve noticed the smell.” Erwin frowned. “Hey, I tell you what, Levi!”

There it was again – Levi thinks. The childishness. It makes him want to lay his head on the other man’s shoulder.

“What? The fuck you mean?”

“Well, my employer, Herr Kaufman is something to do with this Jewish camp. I’ll ask him, when he isn’t busy. If you want me to, that is.” Erwin clarified. He looked at Levi, the black line of his eyebrow and the once-shorn hair falling over his ears. His breath must have felt hot and sharp – Erwin feels heavy with sadness and delirious with delight at the sight of this almost skeletal man eating the food that he had stolen from the crooked house. He looks at the fine, squirrel-like bones of Levi’s hands and the criminal way he grabbed at cakes so they squished into his palm – so many things broke so easily in Nazi Germany and he hopes this will not break.

“Jews are supposed to be demons.” He murmurs. “You’re oddly placid for a demon.”

“That’s your idea of a compliment?” Levi snorted, his breath puffing out. “Placid?”

-       - -

The crooked house had three floors only, Erwin’s house in Austria had far more floors – but this house expanded horizontally, much like what Hitler was trying to do with his country. He ruffled the sheaf of papers in his hands, felt the wax of seals under his fingertips as he approached his employer’s door. He sighed, and knocked with his foot, tapping lightly so that it sounded like he was doing so with his fist.

“Herr Kaufman, I’ve brought you some papers to sign.” He lay them on the desk, next to a chipped china mug. Servitude doesn’t suit him, he thinks, if it weren’t for this arm he would leave. He would go to America, and find out why his country imprisons Jews, and what exactly they were doing in those camps. But this is the present, and there is no America, so he swallows.

“Herr Kaufman,” he bows.

“Yes, Smith?” His employer was always polite to him, which was possibly why he was taking this liberty.

“Is it possible you tell me what is going on in… in the Jew camp?” Erwin feels a tug at his lip at the sound of the word, a flash of Levi’s black eyes. Don’t say that word, fucker, comes a ghetto-tinged voice in his head.

“You mean you don’t know?” Herr Kaufman laughed genially, good-naturedly. His fat cheeks were touched red with the cold and he resembled a very large baby, as some men tended to do. “Oh, Smith, you’re more of a country boy than I thought!”

“Apologies, sir.” Erwin’s fist clenches. Servitude does not suit him. “I will take my leave.”

“We’re doing good work, Smith. Right here, in Auschwitz, we’re doing excellent work.”

-

“Didn’t manage to find out what your camp is for,” Erwin says warmly, his cheeks stuffed with shortbread. “But I will soon, don’t worry.”

Levi looks even more skeletal today, his eyes rimmed with red and his cheeks caving in. Erwin pushes more cakes in as Levi stares at him disbelievingly.

“Eat, Levi, these cakes are so good.” Erwin takes the last one and shoves it through the wire. “I suppose I can eat hundreds, thousands of these in America.”

“Good.” Levi snorted, a tinge of color kissing his grey cheeks. “You’ll match the rest of that fucking country.”

“Hey –“ Erwin looked down at his nails, and feels boyish suddenly, a little less old as if he was in badly washed clothes that shrunk on him. “I’ll take you to America, after I know what you’re doing in this camp. I’ll get you out, I promise.”

“Huh. Sure you will.” Levi’s eyes burned – oh he has cried too much – and he looks away. “Fucking idiot.”

“You don’t know, do you?” Erwin looks shrewd suddenly, and Levi thinks perhaps one day – if he stops being so naïve, so young and trusting, he could be a good leader. “You don’t know what’s happening in there, do you?”

Levi takes a deep breath and affixes a smile.

“No. I don’t.” He moves closer to the fence. “That’s why you’ve got to show me.”

It happens in a second, the kiss, and it shivers through them, their lips pressing against each other, separated painfully by the wire. But Erwin slips his hand through and holds Levi’s, there is nothing else except them and a painful kiss, no small, incidental sounds, no tired murmurs, only silence. Erwin’s tongue traces Levi’s thin, cold lips, his small teeth, and his hand wrests up to stroke the gaunt cheek.

“They’d lock you in here for that, you know.” Levi says tiredly, after they separate. “For being all homo and shit. Give you a pink triangle.”

“So much punishment.” Erwin frowns. “But what for?”

-

Not immediately, perhaps not even soon afterwards, but Erwin, hating confusion and not knowing – takes matters into his own hands. He waits until Herr Kaufman locks his study and retires to bed, before taking the key from the hook. Kaufman stirs. Not today, thinks Erwin.

-

“I’m trying to learn you by heart.” Levi declares one day, his hair blowing backwards. Both their lips are cut and bruised, but Levi’s face is torn up as well, his eye swollen.

“No need.” Erwin grins. “Wait until I find out how your camp works. I’ll get you out, and take you to America.”

“Don’t rush yourself.” Levi’s voice sounded sadder then, like a hole burnt into paper. “Don’t rush. Just kiss me now, fucking idiot, always trying to…find shit out…”

And so Erwin kisses him very firmly and gently and insistently and tenderly and whispers that he will take him away, far away to America, to London, to Paris. And only for today, Levi thinks to himself with a dry sob as his lips sting – only today, let him hold Erwin’s hand and listen to stories of America.

“You’re going to fucking kill yourself.” Levi laughed, as Erwin related a story of how he would buy them a Ford, and race it down the road. “You’ve got one fucking arm and you want to drive a fucking Ford? You aren’t bloody likely!”

Erwin smiles again, and Levi feels warm in the now-spring chill, he has never watched Erwin like this before and he never wanted to. With every glance he is falling a bit more irrevocably in love, and what was heartbreaking was that Erwin is doing the same. Naïve; Levi thinks – I think I love him because although he is older than me, he sits with his knees drawn up and he has scabs on his legs from falling over so often trying to carry more things than his arm allowed. I can’t, Levi thinks – it’s coming Soon, and –

“What can I do?” he speaks aloud, unknowing.

“Trust me.” Erwin says earnestly. “I can do this.”

-

It’s another six months of seeing Levi become almost skeletal, his eyes glinting only when they kissed and held hands – that Erwin finally manages to work up the courage. It’s the afternoon and Herr Kaufman is out, so he oils the study key replica well – and puts it into the doorknob. He sits behind the large desk for the first time, and thinks – ‘this is me in America’, before looking through Kaufman’s papers as carefully as he could.

“Auschwitz….here.” He slides out a contract for supplies, and sees the heading. “Auschwitz Labour Camps.”

His eyes brighten, he has an idea now – and slides the drawers closed, replaces the papers to the best of his ability. Levi, he thinks, he must tell Levi and then they can decide what to do and how he can earn enough good behavior to exit the camps. He runs, stumbling over heather and rocks, his mind fevered and excited, he is unsettled, delirious with ideas – childlike. He stops at the fence and waits there, craning his neck to see if Levi was walking toward him. He stays in the position of a few minutes, his eyes shielded from the sun – but Levi does not come down, and when he looks down, scrawled in an unwieldy hand is the word “THANK.” Erwin surveys the earth properly, and sees that there was a whole line of writing, he runs across the fence to read it, narrowing his eyes to see the words through the wire.

“DEATH CAMP. DINT KNO HOW TO TEL YOU. I KNO ALL ALONG WHY THE CAMP IS HERE. BUT U R SO HAPPY I CANNOT HURT THAT. I CANT SEE U ANYMORE. OUR BARRACKS TURN NOW. CANT FACE U. THANK U FOR FOOD. THANK U FOR LOVE. THANK U FOR AMERICA. LOVE U. THIS IS DEATH CAMP.”

There is bile rising in his throat and he sits on the ground. Keels and presses his face to the earth. Levi wanted to protect _him_ , even as he starved and suffered nightly. Erwin feels old, sick, sick, sick, something looms over him like a great hound – he presses his face further into the earth. He wants to tear at the fence and rip out the wire – but the energy that drew Levi to him, the energy that coiled in him like a child was now drawn into the dusty earth and Levi’s words written in soil. He has no strength to weep, but tears run in with the soil, shoulders shivering – his face impassive, mud stained.

Erwin Smith has grown up.

When he gets up, he looks a madman he knows, and he walks like that to Herr Kaufman’s house. Grabs a poker from the fire with his left hand, and kicks open the door of Herr Kaufman’s office. He feels blind and old, delirious now with rage and grief, black with infection.

“What is the meaning of this!” Kaufman rose, stunned at the sigh of Erwin’s hair stained with mud, face red and blotched, caked with dust. The poker gripped in his hand. “What’s that in your hand?”

“Death camp –“ Erwin spits. “Death camp. _This_ is your good work? This is what I have helped you with?”

“You do not – I have done _nothing_ to you, Smith -“

He does not wait for words, see, Levi died without words. So he lunges, the poker in his fist – shaking – oh God, he loves Levi so much, and blood wells and spurts from Herr Kaufman’s throat. He looks at the body, solemn in the dimness. He is tired. Age is catching up with him.

“I’m going to America.”

-

“Herr Hitler, this is Commander. Smith from America. He has spoken in admiration for your policies and crackdowns on Communism.” The diminutive Fuhrer nodded his head to the giant of a man before him, his shoulders broad, yet one ending in nothing.

“I would shake your hand,” Hitler grinned in broken English. “But I see you cannot.”

“No problem there, Captain.” Commander Smith smiled warmly, his accent indistinguishable from any other Texan. “See you got some Commies last year, huh? Doin’ eh… doin’ some good work, ain’t ya?”

Good work, he thinks. So terribly long ago.

“Yes.” Hitler agreed. “We are doing many good works here. America is against us. But I am happy see one person is for our good cause.”

“Yeah, see, I own a farm in the good country.” Commander Smith continues. “Was always a country boy. Didn’t know shit bout’ none politics. But here, man. Here’s where it’s at – Germany. I came here on a mission of surveillance, but bloody hell, you run the country well.”

“I hear you are a rich man, Commander Smith.”

“Yeah, got some shares in Ford, I do.” Commander Smith shrugged. He smiled suddenly, the dull lights emphasizing the grey threads in his blonde hair.

“You look almost German in this light.” The SS Agent quipped, from the corner of the room. “What an Aryan specimen, if not for that arm.”

“Austrian.” Erwin murmured. He pulls out a small semi-automatic from his pocket and in point blank range, presses it against the Fuhrer’s head. “Austrian.”

He drops the English.

Hitler steps backward.

“Now I want to tell you something. Once on a bleak November morning, I met a man. You took his life away until he was like a fallen building, rubble and grief and fury. He slept a lot. And ate too little. I love him.”

The gun makes an indent in the oily forehead. Someone in the room, possibly one of the SS agents with their guns drawn – whispers “dirty homo.”

“With that man I went to America. I went to Ford, to Burger-King, to everything. But he died a small death. A criminal’s death. And there was always a fence between us. Is this, Herr Hitler, is _this_ your good work?”

He shoots, but the SS agents are quicker, moving Hitler out of the way and onto the floor. There’s a flurry as the Fuhrer is moved to another room, and more men in brown surround Erwin, guns pointed toward his torso, his face, his legs. He feels sick with shame. He is so tired. He feels so _old_. But he is only in his thirties.

“GUN IN YOUR MOUTH!” spits the Captain of the Guard. “NOW.”

He puts it in his mouth. Levi, he longs, and he is raw and finally –

there is a shot.

Followed by fifteen other shots.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so the historical symbolism is toward Erwin Rommel, whom Erwin is sort of canonically based on. He worked for Hitler, tried to assasinate him, then was forced to commit suicide. If you wonder why Erwin was so bloody stupid, there are two reasons. Firstly, I based this on The Boy in Striped Pajamas as requested: Bruno is VERY naive. Secondly, many, many people in Nazi Germany had no idea about the fact that the concentration camps were truly death camps. 
> 
> You can contact me at trashyeruri.tumblr.com
> 
> I hope you liked this story, and I really hope you leave some comments on what you thought!


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